Sikh MTA employees no longer required to don headwear bearing agency logo

The MTA cans the agency logo-on-turban rule. (Photo: Julie Jacobson / AP)

Sikh and Muslim transit workers will be allowed to wear religious head coverings while on the job under a settlement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced on Wednesday. The agreement ended a winding legal case propelled by the Sept. 11 attacks.

The authority faced a series of lawsuits, including one from the United States Justice Department, in the years that followed the attack; the suits claimed that the authority was selectively enforcing policies on head coverings worn by Muslim and Sikh employees and that it had transferred workers to nonpublic positions if they refused to remove the coverings or attach the authority’s logos to them.

Under the new policy, any religious headgear will be permitted as long as it is blue, the color of the authority’s logo, said Adam Lisberg, the authority’s chief spokesman.

In a statement, the Justice Department said the authority would pay a total of $184,500 to eight current or former employees who had been “denied religious accommodations” under the old policy.

Amardeep Singh, the programs director of the Sikh Coalition, which filed two of the lawsuits in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the resolution closed a “disturbing chapter” in the Sikh community’s history in the city.

“There was a feeling in the community that Sikhs and Muslims have been collectively punished in some way for the events of 9/11,” Mr. Singh said.

The authority said in a statement that the previous policy had been in place long before any lawsuits were filed and that it was “never animated by religious or ethnic bias.”

Mr. Lisberg noted that the case was settled “with no finding or admission of liability” on the part of the authority.

For Kevin Harrington, a Sikh employee of the authority, the settlement was little solace. In 2004, he recalled, his superiors said that riders might not recognize him, in his turban, as an authority employee in the event of an emergency. Mr. Harrington, now 61, was told he would be moved to a job in a storage yard if he refused to take off his turban or, later, if he refused to affix an authority logo to it.

On a fateful Tuesday less than three years before that, Mr. Harrington drove his train backward to keep passengers away from ground zero, an act that earned him an award from the authority. “Nobody saw anything,” he said, “other than that I was a train operator.”